Commissioner Laurie Trieger says the current Lane County Board of County Commissioners is different than it was when she took her seat for the first time five years ago. “That does change the dynamics, but it doesn’t change my values or priorities,” she says.
Sitting down with Eugene Weekly in the heart of her South Eugene district at Barry’s Espresso Bakery and Deli on Oak Street, Trieger answered questions about Lane County’s consistently unbalanced budget and how President Donald Trump’s nascent administration will affect county politics.
With a conservative majority on the board supportive of the new administration, Trieger — now in her second term — says the difference between politics and policy is very important.
“Politics is a really blunt instrument; it’s loud and it’s to get people whipped up. And policy is really thoughtful, disciplined, values-driven work,” she says. “There are some people, including some of my colleagues, who have yet to make the transition from politics to policy.”
Dangerous Behavior
“They’re dangerous,” she says of people who have not made the transition from the blunt instrument of politics to the thoughtfulness of policy. This dangerous behavior and what she calls “hateful rhetoric” are encouraged under Trump. Trieger points out that more local politicians than ever before are running the MAGA playbook.
The current board majority supports Trump’s second administration, Trieger says, or is at least supportive of people who are. North Eugene Commissioner Pat Farr and West Lane County Commissioner Ryan Ceniga are not registered to any party, while Springfield Commissioner David Loveall is a registered Republican, according to information from the Oregon Secretary of State.
Not long after this interview, on Jan. 28, a number of community members spoke in regard to the Trump administration in the public comment period of the Tuesday morning Lane County Commission meeting. Wearing paper hearts on their chest, the commenters spoke in support of the local trans community.
Trieger said in response to the comments, “I’m sorry that women have to talk about their most personal and challenging reproductive health care decisions in public in order to have their basic rights honored. I’m sorry children have to beg their government to protect them from gunfire in the classroom. And I am sorry that our trans community has to come before their local government and literally beg for their lives.”
Board Chair Loveall in his own response said, “This nation was founded upon a principle of Christian foundation,” and when it came to a remark one of the commenters made about Trump and trans people, Loveall declared: “Our president only indicates that he is reading his Bible as he should.”
Unlike her colleagues, Trieger says she isn’t expecting any helpful legislation for Lane County, or any other local government, from the new administration. By contrast, the Biden administration passed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, giving local governments much-needed windfalls of funding, she says.
“Do I anticipate that this federal administration will infuse local governments with money to actually serve the needs of the most marginalized and structurally disadvantaged people in our community?” she asks. “No, I do not.” Without ARPA, she says, the county would have struggled to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lane County received $124 million in federal funding from ARPA to help recover from COVID-19. This funding was very helpful in bridging the gaps in the county’s revenue sources, Trieger says. “Lane County has been operating on tight purse-strings for decades.”
The Unbalanced Budget
Trieger argues the root causes of Lane County’s structurally unbalanced budget are “the historic problems of over emphasizing, furthering the advantages of those already advantaged, the over reliance on extraction industry as a way to generate revenue, the absolute hamstringing of the county’s abilities to rely on our property tax base for unrestricted revenue.”
Federal timber receipts just don’t bring in what they used to anymore, and the county only gets 11 cents of the whole property tax dollar. “We are the assessor and tax collection entity for the entire county.”
“There are 85 special districts: school districts, fire districts, library districts, etc.” Each district needs a portion of the property tax pie to operate. Special districts are created by local governments to fulfill specific service needs.
“We keep only 11 cents on the dollar for our own General Fund. We collect no administrative fee for doing that, so we are providing a free service to these 85 districts,” the commissioner says.
That money has to pay for county-owned parks and roads, the law library, the Sheriff’s Office and Lane County Waste Management, among many other services, Trieger notes.
Out of all property tax collected by Lane County, Trieger says 47 percent is divided between the 16 school districts in the county.
Trieger explains that while the county would love to collect more, it is both unpopular and restricted statewide. Property tax increases are statutorily capped to 3 percent, and have been since Measure 50 established a limit for existing properties in 1997.
“When you demand and, in fact, deserve a certain level of service at the same time, you have to recognize that it costs money to deliver that service. So we’re in this vicious cycle of people saying, ‘I don’t want to give you more of my tax dollars because you already don’t deliver adequate service.’”
Between the increasing cost to provide services and general revenue failing to match it, Trieger feels this is compounded by the fact that the county’s 11 cents on the dollar does not go as far as it needs to. The state mandates many services that “have systematically and consistently reduced their funding for, and then costs rise.”
The county government is committed to providing its 2,000-plus employees with livable wages and benefits, despite rising costs. “Our workforce deserves good market-wage wages and health care benefits. The cost, for example, of providing health insurance for our employees has only increased dramatically,” she says. “Services stayed the same, and there’s no revenue source for us to make up that difference.”
Promising to Make a Difference
Despite this, Trieger assures the county will still deliver on its promises. “My primary focus is on the suite of programs that we have been doing and the new ones we’re standing up that address basically what I would call behavioral health equity,” Trieger says.
Additionally, Trieger wants to secure all the necessary capital for the construction of the county’s planned Behavioral Health Stabilization Center, continue the rollout of the county’s behavioral health deflection program and ensure the county’s mental health crisis intervention service remains fully funded.
While the Lane Stabilization Center has yet to break ground, Trieger notes the other programs are already seeing success.
Lane County’s deflection program sends low-level drug and quality of life crime offenders to relevant mental health and rehabilitation programs prior to arrest. The county’s Mobile Crisis Service dispatches mental health professionals to related emergency calls nationwide. In tandem, Trieger promises the programs will continue to make a difference.
However, Trieger says the county’s ability to deliver on those services could be impacted by Trump’s administration. “We are not yet deep enough into his term to fully understand the extent of the threats, but we certainly have some indications. We are monitoring and analyzing as policies develop,” she writes in an emailed statement to EW. “My goal remains to ensure we protect Lane County residents and continue providing critical services.”
Even with continued dedication toward policy, Trieger expects more strife in county politics — emboldened by the Trump administration.
“The general climate, both internal to our board and which is a reflection of what’s happening nationally, is a climate of distrust and duplicity, saying you care about people, but then taking actions that do not come along and actually result in people being cared for. That’s a huge challenge, but that’s also not a new challenge.”
To view the Board of County Commissioners calendar, go to LaneCounty.org.